HIST 486 (Heningburg)

Welcome! The Library provides specialized resources that you can use to research your topics for your writing assignments and final project. Use this guide as a reference while you do your research. Your SCC librarians and Professor Heningburg are happy to answer questions about your research and/or assignment.

Step 1.  Choose your topic. Your topic should be something you are interested in from the documents presented to you.  Topics must address the presence of Africans and African Americans.

Topics will include documents sets from the following:

1. Colonial Life and Development, 1600-1750
2. Revolutionary Era and Post-Revolutionary Era, 1750-1830
3. Reform Movements in Antebellum America, 1790-1850
4. Westward Expansion & Slavery, 1847-1860
5. The Road to the Civil War, 1820-1861

Step 2.  After choosing your topic from the time periods listed above, begin to research, read, and analyze both primary sources as well as historians’ scholarly views and arguments related to your topic. Use Library databases, course materials, and credible websites to conduct your research. From your research, determine what the historian’s scholarly views and arguments are for each of documents; determine what is missing and where your analysis can add to the current historiography as established by the historian; produce a short paper (2-3 pages) for each set of documents. You will turn this in for consultation. Repeat this process for each set of documents. Keep these papers as you will use them for the final research paper.

African American man, sitting outside a military camp tent, 1861 - Library of Congress Digital Collection